@Risk

The editorial “Say No to Raw Cookie Dough,” in Monday’s New York Times, urges Congress to act quickly and approve a bill that would strengthen the Food and Drug Administration’s powers, giving them both more money and more authority, including new clout to recall products and more easily review food safety records or consumer complaints. But –after the string of recent problems with tainted tomatoes, peanuts, pistachios, pot pies, beef, and now cookie dough –will the infusion of power and more than $1B contained in the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009 be enough to overcome consumer skepticism?

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Ask any brand manager or retailer, and they’ll tell you: churn is nothing new. Still, many in the consumer packaged goods sector were surprised –alarmed, even –last week when they found out just how prevalent brand defection is these days. As remarkable as it sounds, newly released research shows that one-third of the average CPG brand’s most loyal US consumers defected from the brand between 2007 and 2008.

The new data comes from a two-year analysis conducted by Catalina Marketing’s Pointer Media Network and the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council. The study, titled “Losing Loyalty, The Consumer Defection Dilemma,” assessed 34 million US shoppers’ purchasing patterns for two-years across 685 leading CPG brands and 24,000 retail stores.

Here are a few of the key findings: (more…)